


How It Was Then

by Gracierocket



Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 11:54:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17001186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gracierocket/pseuds/Gracierocket
Summary: When 19 year old Frederick Wentworth gets his heart broken by Anne Eliot, he conceals the fact from even his most intimate acquaintances. But his sister Sophia is not easily hoodwinked.Happy Yuletide, Mary_West!





	How It Was Then

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mary_West](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mary_West/gifts).



“My dear Frederick,” Sophia began, and then stopped. She looked about her with just a touch of complacency. She was in the Captain’s quarters aboard His Majesty’s Frigate Indefatigable, about to set sail for Gibraltar where she was to rendezvous with her husband. The Captain, Sir Edward Pellew, had waved aside all her objections and insisted that she take over his quarters for the duration of the short crossing, and she was pleased that despite having been on board for no more than an hour, there was no trace of any of her personal effects in the room. If the guns lodged here needed to be run out at a moment’s notice, the crew would find nothing to reproach her for in the way of dresses left drying over canon backs.

She found, on these occasions, that a person who had no useful job to do but who was nonetheless accorded the greatest respect could not help but be in the way, so she had assured the First Lieutenant that she really must write a letter to her brother, and taken herself away. As she gazed out of the window, she heard the familiar pipes that signaled their departure, and felt a thrill of pleasure that she would soon be on her way to her husband.

The only slight snag in her plan was that since Frederick had personally accompanied her to the port that morning, she had absolutely nothing to say to him that would be worthy of the ink. Still, she persevered.

“As I write these words, you are probably speeding your way back up to Kellynch Hall. I must say, it gave me great pleasure to see such a bright happiness in your countenance. I cannot remember the last time I saw that look of inner delight while you were yet on land. It does not do, you know, even for a sailor, to take pleasure only from being at sea. I hope that delight might mean you have finally found something worthy of your notice on shore.”

Sophia stopped again, and considered what she had just written. She considered scratching out the last sentence, but reasoned that Frederick would probably be able to read it anyway. Then she remembered that she was only writing the letter as a distraction anyway, and resolved to copy the whole into a fairer hand later. For now, she scratched it out. It was true, though. Frederick did everything with ardour. Though only 19, he was already a well spoken of First Lieutenant, and Croft had remarked in his last letter that there was talk at the Admiralty of giving him a command at the earliest opportunity. That passion was an ever-present feature of his person, and she had hopes that its renewed presence in his land life might mean he had fallen in love. As someone totally and delightedly in love herself, Sophia was constantly looking for matches for her brother. So far, though, she had been unsuccessful. Frederick’s heart, though easily stirred by a pretty face, has to the best of her knowledge never been truly moved.

Sophia was about to reach for her pen once more when relief came in the form of a very polite, very young midshipman, who begged her pardon but the Captain had enquired whether she might like to take her last glance at England from the Quarterdeck. She leapt up immediately, correctly interpreting this invitation as a sign that since the ship was now underway, she might take some fresh air without annoying anybody.

***

Commander Frederick Wentworth had been putting off writing to his sister. During his brief, electric courtship of Anne, there hadn’t been the time, and afterwards he had found that any activity connected with intimacy was unbearable to him. Much better to throw himself into his new command, into charts and strategies and optimising the speed of his gun crews, than to attempt to connect on an emotional level with a sister who, given enough information, would certainly be able to glean what had happened to him.

Unfortunately for this plan, the little Asp, his pride and joy, had just rendezvoused with the HMS Nutmeg, on her way to Barbados to join the fleet there, and since that fleet was at present home to both his sister and brother-in-law, he could hardly escape writing a few lines. He had therefore tucked himself away in the tiny room that served as his office in the day and his berth at night, to write.

“Dearest Sophia,” he began. “I have the time only to write a few lines before the Nutmeg leaves, so forgive the brevity.” He experienced a twinge of guilt at this white lie, but pressed on. “I find I may at last report that the dear old Asp is finally a ship – or at least a sloop – that I confess myself proud to command. In yesterday’s practice, she managed to send off both broadsides in under four minutes, which is the first truly respectable timing she has yet mustered. Four out of five of my lieutenants are competent and skilled, and one, Harville, my second, is a man I hope to eventually count among my true friends. The midshipmen are...” Here he paused. He could of course be honest with his sister, but he had no wish to burden her with information which she would later, in the interests of tact, be obliged to conceal. “The midshipmen are coming on tolerably well, though their enthusiasm for training their gun crews is lamentably unmatched by their willingness to learn the geometry.”

He stopped. It had taken him a full half hour to complete this paragraph, but he was pleased with the result. The gentle humour, the enthusiastic detail would even to his sister, he was fairly sure, convey nothing but the active young Commander, flush with his first command. He could not quite identify in himself the impulse to keep his true feelings hidden from Sophia. He knew she would be kind, and discreet. It was perhaps because he sensed that he was surviving at present by existing only as a superficial facsimile of himself, and that such a thin persona would not survive even the gentlest of probing from someone he loved.

He was furious with Anne. He could not think of her without feeling his knuckles whiten in his pockets, and he found it virtually impossible to think of anything else. He had thrown himself into his work with vigour, taking an almost vicious satisfaction in his undeniable success, the success he had promised her. He was firmly refusing to remember the way that this success, when still a dream, had been part of the future he had built as a castle in the sky with Anne. He was in the process of reclaiming that dream to be his only. It would have been impossible for him to do so had anyone else known how he suffered.

***

The Bermuda sun shone down on Sophia as she sat on the Quarterdeck of her husband’s ship and re-read Frederick’s latest letter. There was something wrong, she could sense it, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She thought perhaps it was the energy. Frederick was keen, ambitious and active at all times, but when he was unhappy his activity took on a slightly manic, even obsessive quality. 

When he was only 13, his midshipman’s uniform so new that it was still stiff with starch, he had been badly bullied by one of the older boys in his berth. He had never written to her of this directly, would never have been so coarse, but she had picked it up from the careful politeness with which he had written of this particular boy. She had sent back what veiled comfort she could, to a problem she was sure he wished to hide from her. Words of encouragement, amusing stories of home, reports of how very impressed her new husband, Lieutenant Croft, had been when he had met Frederick that Christmas. But the change in tone when Frederick had finally worked out how to rid himself of the problem was palpable. He had solved it with hard work and vigour. At only 14, he had passed the lieutenant’s exam.

There was also the fact that Frederick had failed to mention the two prizes the Asp had already taken – both privateers that would, her husband assured her, prove very lucrative. Her brother was a modest man, but he knew she delighted in his pleasures as if they were her own, so it was odd that he had not mentioned them. Something, she was sure, was keeping him from enjoying the prospect of his coming wealth.

As she was musing on how best to reply, Sophia’s husband came over, smiling broadly.

“Well Sophy,” he said, “I have news you’ll be pleased with, to be sure. Our Frederick shall be receiving more than just your letter on the next packet. I have been ordered to send for him to join us in Bermuda! There now, does that not make your heart glad?”

Sophia beamed at her husband. She hoped he understood that she had, since meeting him, been always possessed of a glad heart.

***

By the time Commander Frederick Wentworth climbed up the side of his brother-in-law’s ship to the ceremonial whistles due his rank, it had been 18 months since he last saw Sophia. He felt more than equal to the meeting. It was true that he still thought of Anne often, but the white anger had been replaced by a kind of dull resentment that he found it much easier to keep hidden – a part of him that was cold, but quiet.

It took Sophia perhaps twenty minutes to perceive the difference in him. She might have been quicker, but Frederick’s easy, pleasant manners were always shown off to greatest effect when surrounded by strangers. As soon as she found herself strolling the deck alone with him, however, the change was all too apparent. The man she had left behind in Portsmouth a year and a half ago had been every bit the continuation of the boy she had watched grow up. Happier, now she came to think of it, that she had ever seen him, but familiar in the way those we have known from childhood will always be unless some dark thing interrupts their natural path. The man walking beside her now was… tarnished. A devoted brother, still, an excellent captain and, she had no doubt, a beloved friend. But there was in him a cold, dismissive quality that she had never seen there before.

Frederick seemed to understand something of what she saw. He compensated, became more cheerful, more amusing, but that cold something remained. She could not imagine where it had come from. She understood him well enough to know that this new facet to his character must be a response to some deep unhappiness, but she saw no cause for unhappiness in his life. His career was excellent, and he had never, so far as she knew, got himself entangled in any romances serious enough to cause so deep a wound. Eventually, she resigned herself to the mystery, and took to consoling him as best she could without showing her hand, by offering him sensible, knowledgeable conversation about his work, carefully secreted praise, and a warm, steady friendship.

The years went by. Eventually, Sophia accepted this new version of her brother, even forgot what he had been before. It was seven years before that changed. She was sitting peaceably in the drawing room of her Bath lodgings with Admiral Croft when Frederick burst into the room. He was smiling, and there was an openness to his countenance that she had not realised she had been missing. And when he announced his engagement to Anne Elliot, Sophia saw once again that perfect, unbroken line that linked the boy she had helped raise to the healed, whole man who stood open-hearted before her.


End file.
